Sound Cards

[EpikDog]

Do sound cards really help for gaming? Or is it just the headset that matters. Since I want surround sound and surround sound doesn't get any better with sound cards do they?

[Chionele]

3 minutes ago, EpikDog said:

Do sound cards really help for gaming?

Unless you play on a system so old that it doesn't have on-board audio, no. Also "surround" with headsets is just marketing speak, and at best you don't lose too much in sound quality by enabling it. Just stick to good 'ol stereo, it's better.

[Semper]

If you're using headphones, you're running on simulated surround either way, which most (if not all?) modern game engines already do in and of themselves.

[thedangerine]

I got a dac from Schiit audio and it made a huge difference in audio quality, personally I would recommend going with something external like that over an internal sound card as you will avoid a lot of electrical noise. idk how much that actually matters to have it outside, but the Electrical Engineer in me thinks that having an external dac will sound a lot better than a sound card for that reason, though I have never done any extensive testing with something like an oscilloscope to see how much that really matters

[Rocketdog2112]

Sound cards do have a better array of adjustments for equalizer, dialog, and noise reduction. That and the Sound Blaster Z I run really adds punch to the Bose Companion 3 Series II that I have on my desktop.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Audio

[rice guru]

This all depends entirely on your baseline how good is the audio out of your motherboard? And how good is the headset or headphones your currently using for gaming?. A shitty source can make a soundcard or external solution seem great in comparison . But if your headphones aren't great in the first place the difference can be pretty minimal